Killing Jesus: A History (14 page)

The crowd is shocked. This reading is a pivotal moment. The passage that Jesus reads refers to an anointed deliverer, a man both prophetic and messianic. He will set them free. Jesus is saying that it refers to him, right now.

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they ask rhetorically. For while they know the answer, the words are a reminder that Jesus should remember his place: his family is not the wealthiest in town; nor is he the smartest among them. He is the son of Joseph, and nothing more. In their eyes, Jesus exalting himself as the man sent by God to preach the good news is offensive. Even Jesus’s family members do not believe he is such a man.
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But Jesus doesn’t back down. He has been expecting this response. “I tell you the truth,” he predicts. “No prophet is accepted in his town.” He then makes a lengthy speech suggesting his belief that the words he has just read refer specifically to him. Jesus then interjects two extremely volatile references to Elijah and Elisha, two prophets who were rejected by the nation of Israel.
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The audience knows its history and immediately gets the message. In essence, Jesus tells these men he has long known not only that he is the Son of God but that their rejection of this claim will cause God to turn his back on them. Jesus uses words such as
famine
,
widows
, and
leprosy
in a way that enrages the entire synagogue.

Disregarding that they are in a house of worship, some men leap to their feet and prepare to attack Jesus. Moving quickly, he races out the door. But they follow him. Working together, the men who, just moments ago, were praying, now cut off any route of escape. Jesus is forced to the edge of town, where a tall cliff provides a commanding view of Galilee.

The men’s intention is to hurl Jesus to his death. And it appears that might happen, for Jesus seems powerless. But at the last minute he turns to face his detractors. Drawing himself up to his full height, Jesus squares his shoulders and holds his ground. He is not a menacing individual, but he has a commanding presence and displays an utter lack of fear. The words he says next will never be written down, nor will the insults these men continue to hurl at him ever be chronicled. In the end, the mob parts and Jesus walks away unscathed.

And he keeps walking.
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*   *   *

Jesus has issued three pronouncements about his identity: one to the public in Jerusalem, one to Nicodemus the Pharisee, and the third in the intimate setting of his own town synagogue, to the people he knows best of all. Three times he has declared himself to be the Son of God, a blasphemous statement that could get him killed. It is a statement that cannot be retracted, just as he can never return to the humble and quiet life he knew growing up. There is no turning back. Nazareth is no longer his home, and he is no longer a carpenter.

Jesus will never write a book, compose a song, or put paint on canvas. But two thousand years from now, after his message has spread to billions of people, more books will be written about his life, more songs sung in his honor, and more works of art created in his name than for any other man in the history of the world.

But now the Nazarene is completely alone, cut off from the life he once knew, destined to wander through Galilee preaching words of hope and love.

Those words will eventually rally billions of human beings to his spiritual cause. But they will not convert the powerful men who currently hold the life of Jesus in their hands.

To them, the Nazarene is a marked man.

CHAPTER NINE

CAPERNAUM, GALILEE
SUMMER, A.D. 27
AFTERNOON

The local fishing fleet has just returned from a long night and day on the water, and great crowds fill the markets along Capernaum’s waterfront promenade. Paved with black volcanic basalt, just like the eight-foot seawall on which it rests, the walkway is a center of activity: fishermen sorting their catch into clean and unclean before making the official count for the taxman;
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large freshwater holding tanks filled with live fish; Matthew, the local tax collector, sizing up the day’s haul at the marine toll station; and everywhere, customers eager to purchase the freshest catch for their evening dinner. What doesn’t get sold this day will be shipped to Magdala for drying and salting, whereupon it will be packed tightly into baskets and exported throughout the Roman Empire.

For more than two centuries, the business of fishing has defined the bustling town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, as boats and nets line every inch of the hundred feet between the stone piers and the breakwater. Some are ferries, designed to carry passengers quickly and easily down to Magdala or across the eight miles of sea to Gergesa. But most boats are for fishing. Of the more than one dozen major fishing villages on the shores of Lake of Gennesaret, as the freshwater sea is also known, none is busier than Capernaum—not even Antipas’s brand-new creation, Tiberias city. A detachment of one hundred Roman soldiers has even been posted here, to ensure that all taxes are collected according to the law.

So it would seem that Jesus has come to the right place if he is looking for an audience—which, indeed, he is. The problem, however, is that Capernaum is actually too busy. No one will be able to hear him over the clink of sinker leads dropping onto stone and the haggling between shopkeepers and customers. The fishermen themselves are exhausted from hours of throwing out their flax fishing nets and hauling them hand over hand back into their boats, and they are in no mood to listen to a religious sermon.

Jesus is undeterred. He stops to look up and down the long, fingerlike row of piers, carefully studying the various fishing boats. He is looking for one boat and one man in particular.

Each boat features a step mast for sailing and oars for rowing when the wind is calm. The boats are constructed of wood and made stronger by the mortise-and-tenon joints
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used in place of nails and the thick handcrafted ribs that run along the interior, just below the deck. The average boat size is thirty feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet high. The bow comes to a point, while the stern is rounded. Local shipwrights use cedar for the hull, oak for the frame, and Aleppo pine, hawthorn, willow, and redbud where needed. These are sturdy craft, designed to withstand the temperamental local winds that can turn the Sea of Galilee from dead calm into tempest in a matter of moments.

The fishermen themselves are even sturdier, with thick hands and forearms heavily callused from a lifetime of working the nets. The sun has made their faces leathery and deeply tanned. It is a tan that extends over the entire body, for those who fish with cast nets (as opposed to the larger dragnets or multilayer trammel nets) must often jump into the water to retrieve their catch, and so prefer to work naked.

Jesus narrows his search to two empty boats. He has met the owners before and now sees them washing and stretching their twenty-foot-wide cast nets in preparation for the next voyage. The two men take care to eliminate knots and tangles, while also replacing any sinker weights that have fallen off. Though he knows next to nothing about fishing, Jesus walks down the pier with confidence and steps into one of the empty craft. No one stops him.

As he gazes back toward the shoreline, Jesus can see the raised central roof of the town synagogue a block from the water. It stands taller than the homes and waterfront administrative offices, reminding him that Capernaum’s citizens worship God and hold a teacher like him in great reverence.

A fisherman in his early twenties walks to the boat. Simon, as he is known, is a simple, uneducated, impulsive man. He knows Jesus from their previous meeting during the summer, as he and some others were fishing for the tropical musht fish in the warm mineral springs down the coast, near Tabgha. At the time, Jesus had called upon Simon and his brother Andrew to join him as he preached his message throughout Galilee and to save souls by becoming “fishers of men.” While Simon had initially accepted that call to evangelism, he also has a wife and mother-in-law to care for. The task of being one of Jesus’s disciples and spreading the word about his message is difficult to balance with his need to make a living. His commitment to Jesus has flagged.

But now Jesus is back, standing before him in his boat.

Simon doesn’t tell him to leave. He just asks Jesus what he wants. Jesus tells Simon to push the boat away from the dock and drop anchor a little way offshore. The spoken word carries easily across the lake’s surface, and Jesus knows he will be heard by one and all if he teaches from a place upon the water.

Simon is exhausted and dejected. He has been up for twenty-four hours straight, sailing his small boat out onto the lake and dropping his nets again and again. His back aches from his leaning over the side to pull those nets in. He has been in and out of the inland sea countless times, without success. He needs a drink of water and a meal. He needs a soft bed. But most of all, he needs to pay his taxes, and last night did nothing to help this, for he did not catch a single fish.

Perhaps Simon has nothing else to do at this moment, or perhaps he can’t face the thought of returning home to his wife and mother-in-law empty-handed. Perhaps he hopes the teacher will say a few words that will lighten his burden. Or maybe he just feels guilty for reneging on his original commitment. Whatever the reason, Simon undoes the knot connecting his boat to its anchorage, pulls the rope toward himself, and pushes away from the pier.

Jesus has been standing this whole while. But when Simon’s boat floats just far enough from the shore that Jesus can be clearly heard by one and all, he takes a seat, adopting the traditional pose for teaching.

Thanks to Simon and his boat, Jesus is soon regaling the entire waterfront at Capernaum with his insightful words. As always, people are overcome by his charisma. One by one, they stop what they are doing to listen.

“Put out into deep water,” Jesus tells the weary fisherman when he is finished speaking, “and let down your nets for a catch.”

“Master,” Simon responds, “we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.”

Sending his boat out into the deep water is the last thing Simon wants to do, yet he also feels powerless to say no.

So with Jesus sitting calmly amidships, Simon hoists the small sail and aims his boat for the deepest waters of the Sea of Galilee.

*   *   *

A short time later, Jesus and Simon are catching so many fish that the nets start to break. The sheer volume of carp, sardines, and musht threatens to capsize Simon’s small craft, and he is forced to signal to James and John, the partners in his fishing cooperative, to come help.

Rather than rejoice, Simon is terrified. From the moment Jesus first stepped into his boat, something deeply spiritual about his presence made Simon uncomfortable. He feels unholy in comparison, even more so after hearing Jesus’s teachings about repentance and the need to be cleansed of all sins. Simon wants this man out of his life immediately. He throws himself onto his knees atop a pile of writhing fish and begs Jesus to leave him alone. “Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus tells Simon. “From this day on, you will catch men.”

*   *   *

And so it is that Simon—whom Jesus renames Peter, meaning “rock”—becomes Jesus’s first disciple. Peter cannot explain why Jesus has selected him—not the local rabbi, not the most pious teachers in Capernaum, not even some of the more devout fishermen—for this honor. Other disciples soon join him, including Matthew, Capernaum’s despised local taxman, who oversees all collections for Herod Antipas.

By early in the year 28, Jesus has selected twelve men to follow him and learn his teachings as disciples, so that they may one day go out alone into the world and preach his message.

Four of the apostles—Peter, Andrew, James, and John—are fishermen. Jesus has specifically singled out men from this calling because their job requires them to be conversant in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and a little Latin, which will allow them to speak with a wider group of potential followers.

All of the children are from Galilee, except one. He is from a town called Carioth—or “Iscariot,” as it will one day be translated into the Greek of the Gospels. His name is Judas. He speaks with the polished accent of Judea’s southern region and is so good with money that Jesus selects him as the group’s treasurer instead of Matthew. Jesus chooses Judas as one of his twelve disciples
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and refers to him openly as a friend. One day that will change.

Galilee is a small region, measuring roughly thirty by forty miles. Its cities are interconnected by a series of ancient highways and Roman roads
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plied daily by traders, pilgrims, and travelers. Capernaum is a savvy choice for a base of operations, as the fishing community is constantly sending out its product to far-flung markets, and those who hear Jesus speak in and around that city spread the news about his ministry when they travel to places such as Tyre and even Jerusalem to sell their baskets loaded with salted fish. Crowds begin to find him on those days when Jesus ventures out from Capernaum to preach. He is not always on the move, for his disciples still have jobs and families to support. But as the months pass and his popularity grows, when Jesus does preach, the crowds that gather to hear him grow in size. The Nazarene teaches in synagogues and in open fields, in private homes and along the lakeshore. Men and women abandon their labors to hear him speak, and vast audiences crowd close together to hear Jesus’s simple message of God’s love and hope.

Not everyone adores him, however. It would seem that a lone man preaching such a noncombative message would not present a problem for Rome or its henchman Antipas. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, has a palace in Caesarea, just a day’s ride from Capernaum. Thanks to Roman spies, word has reached Pilate about a potential Jewish rebel. The spies of Herod Antipas are also keeping a close eye on Jesus, whom they perceive to be a consort of and successor to John the Baptist. The Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem and Galilee, particularly the law-centric Pharisees, are now watching him closely for any violation of religious law, and they seek to debunk his teachings. They mock him for drinking wine with sinners and for selecting a much-despised tax collector, Matthew, as a disciple. And when news of supernatural healings performed by Jesus begin to make the rounds in Galilee, the religious authorities become even more alarmed.